Solving the case within barely 30 hours, Thane Police Commissioner Vivek Phansalkar said the body belonged to a woman who was chopped into pieces by her father as he was opposed to her love-affair with a youth.
It was at around 5.30 a.m. on Sunday that a man lugging a heavy suitcase hailed an autorickshaw outside the Kalyan station to go to Bhiwandi town nearby.
Since there was a stink emanating from the suitcase, the autorickshaw driver demanded to know what was inside it before going ahead on the journey.
At this, the man panicked and ran away from the autorickshaw, abandoning the bag in the vehicle, said Phansalkar.
Later, with the help of policemen at a nearby beat chowky, the suitcase was forced open to reveal the lower half of a woman, chopped from waist-below.
"It was a twin challenge before us. First to identify the woman whose upper body was missing, and to trace the killer on priority," Phansalkar told mediapersons on Monday evening.
Accordingly, multiple teams got into the act, scanned CCTV footage to zero in on the suspect, 47-year old Arvind R. Tiwari, a resident of Titwala town.
Phansalkar said he was identified as an employee of a logistics company based in Malad, north-west Mumbai, and based on this, the Crime Branch sleuths nabbed him this afternoon from an undisclosed location.
Upon interrogation, the accused Tiwari confessed to the police that he had killed his daughter Princy, 22, as he was against her love-affair with a local boy.
The police chief added that in order to mislead the police, Tiwari chopped the body into two pieces to avoid identification and for disposal at different locations.
The latest 'suitcase murder' case came barely a day after Mumbai Police solved the killing of a Santacruz musician and arrested his adopted daughter and her boyfriend for the alleged murder on Saturday.
The 19-year old girl, Aradhya J. Patil, and her 16-year old boyfriend had killed Bennett Rebello, 59, at his home on November 27, chopped his body into small pieces for three days, packed them in a suitcase and two bags which they dumped into the Mithi River flowing near Vakola.
The suitcase washed up on the Arabian Sea shore off Mahim, and the Mumbai Police Crime Branch solved the case by arresting the duo on December 7.
( With inputs from IANS )